Solving crimes in Death Valley Relationship drama Four Years Later Facing the end of the world with Earth Abides Designing Rise of the Raven Landing in The Pirate Bay Red Rocks Borderline And more...
Meet the cast and crew behind this BBC comedy-drama, in which a former TV detective utilises his investigative skills in the real world when he teams up with an actual detective.
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Creator Mithila Gupta and lead director Mohini Herse discuss their partnership on a series that travels between Australia and India to tell the story of a long-distance relationship.
Alexander Ludwig and Jessica Frances Dukes reveal why this MGM+ series was both a dream project and the most demanding of their careers, as they play two people who come together at the end of the world.
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SIX OF THE BEST: Elin Kvist
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FACT FILE: Borderline
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SCENE STEALERS: Red Rocks
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Kvist’s Six of the Best
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Life imitating art
DQ heads to Cardiff to meet the cast and crew behind BBC comedy-drama Death Valley, in which a former TV detective utilises his investigative skills in the real world when he strikes a partnership with an actual detective.
Timothy Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth form the unlikely duo at the show’s centre
At Insole Court, a Grade II-listed Gothic mansion house nestled in the Cardi suburbs, murder is afoot.
A group of guests have gathered in the library of the grand building for a 1930s-themed murder-mystery party, each resplendent in period costume and hairstyling. But the small talk and chatter between them dies down when the sound of a large gong calls them to attention.
“Luncheon is served… with a side dish of murder,” cackles Patricia Hodge, here in character as party host Helena Hart. But when a real murder takes place, it falls on an unlikely crime duo to capture the killer.
The scene comes from episode five of forthcoming BBC comedy-drama Death Valley, which stars Timothy Spall as eccentric national treasure John Chapel, a retired actor who was best known for his role as fictional TV detective Caesar before retiring to Wales.
When his neighbour is murdered, John strikes up a partnership with disarming but ambitious detective sergeant Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) to help solve the case. The six-part series then sees the distinctly odd couple clash, bicker, brainstorm and bond on their way to solving a number of di erent killings, including one at the murder-mystery party. Other suspicious deaths lead John and Janie to infiltrate and investigate a walking group, a wedding, an amateur dramatics society and a school reunion.
The regular cast features Steffan Rhodri ( The Way ) as DCI Clarke, Janie’s boss and so-called
“Timothy Spall Actor
mentor; Alexandria Riley ( Baby Reindeer ) as Baxter, a straight-talking pathologist and friend of Janie; Melanie Walters ( Gavin & Stacey ) as Yvonne, Janie’s ‘no boundaries’ mother; Remy Beasley ( One Day ) as Rhiannon, an old adversary from Janie’s past; and Rithvik Andugula ( Extraordinary ) as DC Evan Chaudhry, an eager-to-please and somewhat naïve junior police officer.
A BBC Studios Comedy Production for BBC Two, BBC One Wales and BBC iPlayer, Death Valley sees Spall in a role that couldn’t be more di erent from his part in The Sixth Commandment, the true crime drama that earned him a best actor Bafta earlier this year.
“That’s one of the joys of being asked to do various things, to go from one style of things to the other,” he tells DQ during a break from filming. “But I’ve always said that tragedy is a piece of piss in comparison to comedy. It just is.
Tragedy is a piece of piss in comparison to comedy. There’s no pressure, there’s no expectation apart from telling the story. With comedy, there’s more expectation because you’re committing yourself to saying, ‘I fully intend to make people laugh.’
”There’s no pressure, there’s no expectation apart from telling the story. With comedy, there’s more expectation because you’re committing yourself to saying, ‘I fully intend to make people laugh.’”
Pitched as a comedy-drama, Death Valley is a classic murder-mystery series at its core, but from the very beginning, the mismatch of John and Janie provides the humour, particularly as Janie “hero-worships” John’s TV alter-ego, Caesar, and she finds him to be contrary to what she was expecting. “Be careful when you meet your heroes,” Spall jokes. “But what I loved about this when I first read it is these two characters immediately recognise each other’s souls. They can be immediately rude to each other and honest. They both have an a ection for each other and a kind of disdain.”
Despite the age gap, theirs isn’t a fatherdaughter relationship. Instead, it’s more like siblings, and purely platonic. “Janie is such an eccentric character with all sorts of idiosyncrasies and foibles,” Spall continues. “She appears to be quite ditzy on one level, but is incredibly intelligent on another and straightforward and quite blunt. She’s quite rude, but also perceptive and childish – the same as him.”
Beneath their respective bravado, both John and Janie must confront serious issues they are trying to deal with, and come to help each other deal with those problems. “It’s not sentimental, but it does carry a profundity because of this generational barrier-free zone,” Spall says. “This contact they have is rare across the generations, across the sexes. It’s interesting because it also looks very straightforward, but you’ve got all these layers and two people who come together to solve these crimes.”
When it comes to getting into character, Spall had quite the brief. John is a former actor who
>
Keyworth is detective sergeant Janie Mallowan, who risks her career by partnering with John Chapel
< is best known for playing a TV detective, and is now playing detective for real by assisting an actual police o cer solve a series of murders. Throughout the show, which is distributed by BBC Studios, there is also footage of Caesar, adding another layer to Spall’s performance.
“Without giving too much away, it’s lovely to subvert that [whodunnit trope] with the kind of eccentricity of these two characters,” says Spall. “In the first episode, when we see him going into his first foray into summing up the case, he’s constantly pestered by people who want selfies. We know where we are and what we’re doing, and we pay homage to it, but we always have the wonderful, organic relationship and the fact he’s an actor to subvert it. It’s a bit of a balancing act.”
Keyworth describes the show as “genuinely the best job I’ve ever had. It’s gorge, it really is,” she exclaims. “Working in Wales is always a treat, and the crew have been amazing.”
The actor, who hails from Aberystwyth, is best known for roles in Welsh-language series Bang and Craith (Hidden), as well as Alex Rider and Lost Boys & Fairies. Here, she jumped at the chance to play the “local bobby on the beat.”
“Without sounding too ‘tick boxy,’ she is neurodivergent, as am I. She’s somewhat easily distracted but still really good at her job, so it’s not a problem,” she says of her character. “It’s something we can draw humour from, and that’s something I deal with. The comedy always comes from the characters being themselves. That’s what really drew me to the scripts when I first read them.
“Janie is really determined, but the contradiction of being determined and easily distracted makes really good comedy. For the first time, I was really pleased that it wasn’t just a comedy that was laughing at the Welsh person. I wasn’t there to be the butt of the joke, it was laughing with these characters.”
When Janie befriends John, she discovers he has a skill for recognising character and emotion in people, and uses him to help crack
the cases. But the partnership comes at a huge potential cost – that of her job. That leads classically trained actor John to find increasingly creative ways to become a part of the investigation, not least joining the am-dram society at the centre of one episode.
they’re solving murders? It got quite meta,” he says. “I thought, ‘What if it just eats itself completely?’ So there’s an ex-detective who now helps a detective solve murders pretending to be a detective.”
“She’s terrified of losing her job. When you play the truth of that, that’s really scary,” Keyworth says. “What’s amazing when you have an actor like Timothy is that he can bring something out of you that means you can really feel those stakes.”
In each episode, Spall and Keyworth are joined by a new round of guest stars who each become somewhat involved or implicated in the murder John and Janie investigate. They include Hodge (A Very English Scandal), Kiell Smith-Bynoe (Ghosts), Sian Gibson (Peter Kay’s Car Share) and Vicki Pepperdine (Poor Things).
The premise led Doolan to subvert the traditional murder-mystery format at every turn. “Whenever it starts to feel too much like a normal crime show, someone can come in and go, ‘Aren’t you John Chapel?’” he says.
However, he was cautious that the series not become a spoof of the genre it lovingly prods. “Because I’m such a fan of the crime genre, and I love writing comedy as well, I wanted to do one that was faithful to both. So whenever it started to feel like it was mocking the genre, I would steer away from that,” he says. “It’s hard to find that tonal line, but I definitely wanted to do a
“We’re lucky to have some of the most fantastic Welsh actors, and lots of brilliant young actors. It’s a fantastic group,” says Spall. “And every time we do a new episode, we replace the company. It’s like Gwyneth and I are on tour.”
The creator and writer of Death Valley is Paul Doolan (Trollied, Bloods), who is a selfconfessed murder-mystery fan. He has one dog named Marple, after Agatha Christie’s beloved detective, and another named after mystery writer Dorothy L Sayers. His agent also represents several actors who have played TV detectives – a fact that triggered the idea for a series that centres on the strange dynamics of a fan-TV detective relationship.
“It’s good having a TV detective and a fan, but what if the fan is also a detective and together
crime show murder-mystery fans can be fully engaged in, so you have a di cult puzzle, but not sacrifice the comedy either. Hopefully neither of those audiences will go home short-changed.”
Doolan worked with a writers room to help him map out each episode, and the crime puzzles at the centre of them. He was also keen for Wales to be more than just a filming location for the series, with Sian Harries writing additional material for the show and Nina Metivier cowriting episode three.
Having a distinct world for each episode certainly helped the writing process, as Doolan found it “really useful” to impose constraints on the murder-mystery plot, while restricting the number of potential suspects also helped to focus the story. “I definitely overcomplicated >
Spall’s Chapel is a retired actor best known for playing a detective on TV
Each episode features a new supporting cast
BERTIE CARVEL RETURNS AS OUR ICONIC, ENIGMATIC DETECTIVE
WRITTEN BY ALDÍS AMAH HAMILTON, BALDVIN Z, ELÍAS HELGI KOFOED-HANSEN AND RAGNAR JÓNSSON
things at first,” he says. “Because I was such a fan of the genre, I tried to make it faithful to the whole thing. I feel like by the time we got to five and six, I felt quite comfortable plotting it.”
Momentum proved to be the key, as Doolan sought to give the series a sense of pace that would keep the story moving forward – and the audience engaged until the murderer is revealed. “It’s like when you read a murder mystery, what’s going to get you to the next page? What’s going to keep you interested? That’s where having a 45-minute timeslot, four suspects and serial arcs comes in handy,” he says. “There’s no time for navel-gazing. Their relationship also has that kind of screwball comedy pace where they can just insult each other and insult back. It will help make the show feel distinct from the genre.”
Another challenge was finding ways for John to interact with each investigation without raising the suspicions of Janie’s superiors. “You have these big denouement scenes and they’re always fun in the genre. It would have felt like cheating to not have John in those scenes, so it’s just testing that line of, ‘How do we get away with him being here?’” he says. “Sometimes that’s him going undercover and ingratiating himself. Sometimes it’s just him helping Janie because she needs it to progress her career. But I feel like we’ve answered it in every episode.”
When DQ visits the set, the production is entering the final two weeks of a 12-week shoot,
with the six episodes largely shot in order to accommodate the di erent guest casts and locations. Unsurprisingly, those two elements were the biggest tasks facing producer Nikki Wilson.
“Casting has probably been the hardest thing because it’s set in Wales and the vast majority of the guest cast are Welsh. But looking at Welsh actors automatically does make it a smaller pool,” she says. “Then when you factor in that they’ve got to be funny, that makes the pool even smaller because we’ve got very good dramatic actors, but not all of them can do comedy. Then when you factor diversity into the mix, which is always a priority to make sure we’ve got di erent faces on screen and a variety of di erent acting talents, the Venn diagram becomes very small in terms of the talent that’s available.”
Spall and Keyworth were “no-brainers” to play John and Janie, however. The production did scout “every 30-something actress in Wales” for the latter, but from the first round of tapes it was clear Keyworth was the one. “Gwyneth’s audition actually informed what Paul was writing for Janie on the page. Thankfully, the commissioners loved her as well and it was all a happy ending,” says Wilson, who was further “thrilled” when Spall said yes to the project. The actor then worked with Doolan to develop John beyond the writer’s initial ideas.
Wilson has been “spoiled for choice” in
terms of locations, as Wales itself has become an integral part of the show. Filming took place at places including Penarth Pier, the Blaeny-Glyn waterfall and the Brecon Beacons, the “chocolate box” town of Llantwit Major and The Paget Rooms in Penarth, as well as Insole Court.
“There are a lot of scenes that take place in the police station and John’s house, so when we’re outside [it’s important] we are delivering on the scale and the beauty as well,” Wilson notes.
But complicating the production further has been the little matter of filming scenes from Caesar, the fictional 1990s TV drama that made John a household name. Moments from the show-within-the-show, which is set in the 1950s, are woven throughout Death Valley, usually when someone happens to be watching it or when it appears on a TV in the back of a scene.
“He’s where I get to get all the classic crime tropes out,” Doolan says. “He’s very interwar period, very meticulous, not a million miles from Poirot and the idiosyncrasies of [Sayers detective] Peter Wimsey.
“There’s definitely an iconic coat because Janie gets to wear it in episode two when John’s clearing out his house. She’s fully obsessive about the props of Caesar and he’s pretending he doesn’t care. I quite liked the idea of those actors who have the albatross of one part they’ve played really well for years, where they sort of resent it but also take pride in it. I liked the line between that.”
With a cliffhanger ending to the serialised story arc involving John and Janie, Doolan already has plans for more adventures with the detective duo and unlimited different worlds they could find themselves in, while he is also entertaining the idea of an all- Caesar Christmas special. “I don’t know how you’d do it. The page-one version of it is a dream, but I’d definitely want to do that,” he says. “It’s just figuring out how to sustain that for an episode, but I’d love to give that a go. It’s definitely one we’re thinking of.”
As for Spall and Keyworth, they’re starring in a show about a TV detective who plays the role for real. So would either of them make good detectives themselves? “I have a habit of losing things,” jokes Keyworth. “Janie is better at keeping things together than I am, so I fear I would lose all the key evidence. So probably not.”
“Useless. I’d be a pushover,” adds Spall. “You have to have a forensic mind, and I don’t have that. I might be able to work something out from a psychological point of view. But I’m no good at chess, and you have to be a chess player and understand process. You have to go through eradication. What I do know about police work is that although what we see in the presentation of it is exciting and brilliant, a lot of it is just hard graft. Sifting through loads and loads of evidence, paperwork, getting to the evidence, building a case that is mundane on the face of it. That’s proper hard cop work.”
Director Simon Hynd in discussion with Keyworth (left) and guest star Sian Gibson
Death Valley is filmed and set in Wales
Romantic drama Four Years Later travels between Australia and India to tell the story of a married couple facing up to a long-distance relationship. Creator Mithila Gupta and lead director Mohini Herse discuss their partnership on this groundbreaking series.
t home in the Indian city of Jaipur, screenwriter Mithila Gupta grew up on the fairytale romances portrayed in countless Bollywood movies. But when it came to writing her own romantic drama, she wanted to tell a “real and grounded” story that better reflected reality.
Now living in Sydney, Australia, she was particularly interested in the immigrant experience and how two people can reconnect with each other after being separated for an extended period of time.
“I’ve grown up watching Bollywood and I love it. No shade on Bollywood – it’s a huge inspiration – but the films I grew up on painted love in a certain way, and altered what I expected of reality, which ended up being disappointing at times,” Gupta tells DQ. “So I’ve always wanted to tell a real love story, a story of a couple as immigrants, and to just go into that human experience.”
That story is told in Four Years Later, an eight-part series set between India and Australia that follows the marriage and subsequent separation of Sridevi (Bombay Begum’s Shahana Goswami) and Yash (24: India star Akshay Ajit Singh), who must spend time apart immediately after their arranged marriage when Yash lands a highly coveted medical traineeship in Sydney.
Told through dual perspectives, the series explores themes of love, intimacy, familial duty and belonging as it uncovers the complexities of Yash and Sridevi’s relationship both in the present, once they are reunited, and in flashbacks that detail the challenges they faced while apart.
“Our characters have two contrasting experiences of home and two very contrasting experiences of the new land. Ultimately, that’s what challenges their relationship the most,” showrunner Gupta (Five Bedrooms, Bump) explains. “It’s about seeing two people and how they find their belonging. They get pulled in two opposite directions but always fight to stay together.”
With two timelines and two perspectives set across two countries, Four Years Later could have been a complicated proposition. Gupta admits there is “absolutely no structure” to the series, but says her one rule when writing it was to follow the emotion. That’s how she found the right moments to jump back into the past or switch between Sridevi and Yash in the present, where the majority of the
Shahana Goswami and Akshay Ajit Singh star as Sridevi and Yash
< series is set. “So we’ve followed the emotion and we’ve found even in the edit that, ‘Oh, actually, the episode shouldn’t open there. Let’s move that here,’ which as a writer has been so interesting because you think once you’ve locked your script, you’re done,” she says. “But it’s been so rewarding to actually play with the structure.
“In the writers room, we were always like, ‘I just need to see this,’ so we threw back when we needed to. It’s a little bit experimental in that regard, and I’m interested to see how it works for audiences. We think it’s quite easy to follow because India and Sydney are such different places, and the timelines are attached to place. Just sit down and go on the journey. You’re not really sure where you’re going to go.”
Produced by Australia’s Easy Tiger (Colin from Accounts, The Twelve) with the support of Indian production company Suitable Pictures, the show begins as Sridevi arrives in Sydney expecting a fantasy reunion with the husband she adores. But after leaving bustling Jaipur, she finds all is not as she had hoped. However, while Yash has struggled to fit into his new homeland, Sridevi begins to thrive, shaking off her identity as a dutiful housewife and discovering a new world of freedom and independence.
Discovering that a lot has happened to their spouse in those intervening years, they each uncover a web of lies and false promises that threaten the undeniable passion and devotion they have for one another.
Playing out in both Hindi and English, the show moves between Jaipur, Mumbai and Sydney and features a supporting cast including Kate Box (Deadloch), Taj Aldeeb (The Fall), Roy Joseph (Five Bedrooms) and Luke Arnold (Scrublands).
To make the series, Gupta partnered with lead director Mohini Herse (Appetite), who shot episodes one, two, four and eight and split her time between Australia and India, where the majority of the scenes in her episodes are set. As well as being drawn to the themes at the heart of Gupta’s story, Herse was intrigued by the challenge of being an Australian director working in India with an Indian crew on a series that uniquely bonds the two countries together.
“That was really what was quite exciting about the show, to find our tone in India, bring it back to Australia and find this visual style that can seamlessly interact between two places, which on the page are seemingly very different, but then anchor it with two characters and this universal story that we can all resonate with,” Herse says. “So it was a very exciting project for me and it’s been really rewarding.
“It’s also challenging because it’s a drama just about two people, so there’s nowhere to hide either. You really have to focus on what makes these two people special and the stakes within such an intense relationship as well.”
In terms of direction, Herse wanted to lean into ideas of memory and senses, which allowed her to move between time and place in the story – shifts that are triggered by a smell, touch, taste or a sound that resonates with the characters in
interpret the memory in the same way,” she says. “That’s a
some way. But memory, and its unreliability, is also used to mislead viewers. “That’s something really great that Mithila has done because, in the episode, you think it’s going to go one way because we’ve been shown a memory, and maybe it goes the other way because that person actually didn’t interpret the memory in the same way,” she says. “That’s a really interesting perspective that the show plays with between the two characters.”
Early on in development, Four Years Later was actually a fourpart series, which naturally gave the story more of a thriller feel.
“But we were all like, ‘We just want to tell a love story,’ and it was more about the perception of the four years [the main characters spend] apart,” Gupta says. “So we don’t play events from two perspectives but we do play with their interpretation of what that time apart was like, what they kept from each other and why.”
In the writers room, Gupta was joined by Nicole Reddy and S Shakthidharan, both of whom also have South Asian heritage. With such a high-concept series, their biggest challenge proved to be fitting all of their ideas into the cumulative four-hour running time, from Srivdevi and Yash’s individual takes on the immigrant experience to his career ambitions and her search for a place in the world. However, the writing team quickly decided that if a story didn’t affect the central relationship, it didn’t have a place in the show.
world.
“We used to have a lot more medical plot,” Gupta says. “In the writers room, you get scared you won’t have enough plot for the propulsion of the story. It was hard at the time, but it was so rewarding to just pull out anything that didn’t affect that relationship.”
get
On set in Sydney and Jaipur, Herse sought to bring a “local” perspective to the series, rather than focusing on globally recognisable elements like Australia’s Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Great Barrier Reef, or the iconic temples, colours, sights and sounds readily associated with India on screen. That’s not to say that familiar locations in Jaipur and Sydney don’t feature at all, but the ambition was always to normalise them in the way that someone who walks past the Sydney Opera House every day might not see it in the same way as someone visiting the city for the first time.
Australia’s Sydney Harbour
on screen. That’s not to say might not see it in the same way
“I wanted to really strip it
then what does a different
“I wanted to really strip it back. If someone’s grown up in a place, what makes it a place for them? What does home look like for them? And then what does a different place look like when you don’t feel at home in it?” the director says. “We wanted to be in the spaces where our characters are existing and where they’re living their life. I wanted to show how it feels to be home.”
The show’s stars pose with creator Mithila Gupta
Yash has to move to Australia straight after he and Sridevi tie the knot in India
“
When it came to shooting, the two locations couldn’t have been more different. “The crew was three times larger in India, and that was a little bit overwhelming to begin with,” Herse says. “But at the same time, India has such a thriving film and television industry. In terms of creativity, from the gaffer to the grip to the art department to the runner, everyone was so excited to talk to Mithila and myself about the story.
the stakes of the whole story, especially around [questions of] starting a family. We made her much more bolshie from the top, which actually changed her entire arc.”
That meant Sridevi’s story became less coming-of-age and more about her finding her place in the world, both while Yash is away in Australia and then when they reunite.
No shade on Bollywood – it’s a huge inspiration – but the films I grew up on painted love in a certain way, and altered what I expected of reality, which ended up being disappointing at times.
Mithila Gupta Creator ”
“In a bizarre way, everyone had a way to connect to it, whether it was a son going to Australia and having a hard time, or if they’d known someone who did have a family member or friend who was split apart. Everyone had a way in to the story, and it meant everyone was really excited to collaborate and represent this story in an authentic way.”
Across the series, costume designers, production designers and other department heads in India collaborated with their Australian counterparts to ensure elements of each location were woven through the whole show. Herse also worked closely with fellow director Fadia Abboud (House of Gods, Five Bedrooms) to ensure the Indian shoot complemented the way scenes in Australia were shot.
“There was a lot going on in terms of everyone feeling connected and understanding the two worlds,” Herse says. “But it was weird doing 16-hour days in India and then coming to Australia and having a very reduced crew and shooting just in an apartment. Or going to a hospital and just being like, ‘Are we in the same show? Is this a medical drama?’ But at the end of the day, as soon as you put Shahana and Akshay in front of the camera, it’s the same show and they just carry so much of that. They were fantastic.”
On set, Goswami and Singh faced shooting out of sequence, as scenes would be filmed by location, meaning in the first couple of days they recorded moments from both episode one and episode eight. Gupta and Herse both spent time in rehearsal with the stars, talking through the characters and how they should lean into their cultures and experiences.
“They were so their characters,” Gupta says, “Originally Sridevi was a lot younger, and Shahana was just like, ‘Wow, this is such a relatable woman. She’s so strong and powerful, but why does she have to start as a more traditional version of an Indian bride?’ So we aged the character up, which raised
“Shahana really brought Sridevi to life, and then Akshay, when we were testing him for Yash, he said things and I was writing them down because I was like, ‘That’s what Yash would say,” Gupta continues. “It was so uncanny. He related to the character in so many ways. We went through it all together a lot in rehearsals in India, and then after that they just took it. They understood the heart of the story and where they were in that story, even though we jumped around.”
Distributed internationally by ITV Studios, Four Years Later also employed intimacy coordinators in India and Australia to work with Herse and Abboud on the show, from choreographing Sridevi and Yash’s first kiss to numerous “steamy scenes” – as Herse describes them – through the series.
“The intimacy was such a huge part of it too,” Gupta says. “In the very early pitch, it was [Sally Rooney adaptation] Normal People, but with brown people, and then people would be like, ‘Oh, really like Normal People?’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, we invented the Karma Sutra. We want to see these characters do a real love story and see how their intimacy changes.’ That’s been so rewarding. To see it actually pushing the boundaries as well, even beyond expectation, has been so awesome.”
Herse adds: “Shahana’s had a big career, so the fact that this was her first time [with an intimacy coordinator], it was my first time, it was Mithila’s, and to start that conversation around intimacy practices and to find it together, it was so fun. It just felt right.”
Now reflecting on making Four Years Later, which debuted on SBS on October 2, Gupta calls it a miracle. “From conception and getting it up to us actually shooting in India and Australia and the beautiful people who have been involved, it’s absolutely a miracle,” she says. “I’m so proud of it, and I’m really excited for audiences to watch something and relate to it across the board. We’re so excited to showcase these characters that we don’t often get to see on our screens. But more than that, it’s a love story.”
The project has also been life-changing for Herse, who was an emerging director in Australia and has now clocked up more shooting hours in India than in Oz. She has also since landed a six-month placement with Bad Sisters prodco Merman in London. “I was like, ‘I guess I’m an Indian director now, guys,’” she jokes. “There was such a beautiful vibe on this set, in both countries, and I’m really excited for everyone to watch it and to see that, because when you shoot something and you feel it on set, it does translate to screen. We had some really magical moments, so I’m excited for everyone to share that with us.”
Mohini Herse (centre) is lead director on the eight-part drama
Earth Abides stars Alexander Ludwig and Jessica Frances Dukes reveal why this MGM+ series was both a dream project and the most demanding of their careers, as they play two people who come together at the end of the world.
FOR A SERIES THAT BEGINS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, EARTH ABIDES OPENS WITH A SUITABLY MINIMALIST CAST. In fact, for most of episode one, Alexander Ludwig is the only actor on screen – and this one-man play only turns into a two-hander with the arrival of Jessica Frances Dukes in episode two.
It’s little wonder, then, that both actors describe the forthcoming MGM+ series as a dream project, yet one that tasked them with the most demanding roles of their careers.
Based on the classic sci-fi novel of the same name by George R Stewart, it begins as an unprecedented virus sweeps around the globe, wiping out most of humanity. Ludwig plays Ish, a reclusive geologist living a semi-isolated life who misses the whole event after falling into a coma and awaking to discover he is entirely alone – until he spots smoke coming from a nearby house, which he discovers belongs to Emma (Dukes).
Set over the course of a year, episode two sees them meet, grow close and eventually start a relationship as they overcome problems including a dwindling power supply, a shortage of fresh meat and a terrifying invasion of rats.
nearby house, which he discovers belongs to Emma (Dukes). actor. I always said when I finished
“It was one of the most creatively inspiring things I’ve ever done,” Ludwig tells DQ. “That role is the dream role for any actor. I always said when I finished Vikings, I’ll never have an arc like that again – until, of course, I got o ered Earth Abides and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I thought I had a lot to do
on Vikings. This is next level. It’s such an honour to be able to tell that story, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before.”
“I feel like we did such hard work, and we just gave everything we had,” echoes Dukes ( ). “It was one of those experiences you’re going to walk away from and know you did your job and be happy because it was a dream job. The people, the script, the characters, the story – it was a dream.”
a single line of dialogue – of which there is relatively
a single line of dialogue – of which there is relatively little in the pilot.
Until then, he hadn’t read Stewart’s novel. But when he did, Ludwig was “so blown away. Then when I got the scripts, I felt like the adaptation was brilliantly done,” he says. “It stayed very true to the novel but, in proper entertainment fashion, was able to keep the heart of it without throwing too much out.
After commissioning the six-parter from showrunner Todd Komarnicki ( Sully ), MGM+ boss Michael Wright let Vikings
After commissioning the six-parter from showrunner Todd Komarnicki ( ), MGM+ boss Michael Wright let Ludwig know he was in line to play Ish after watching him as Bjorn Ironside in five seasons of , which was produced in part by MGM Television. The actor then began his own research into the character, even before he had read
“Candidly, there were moments where it was utterly horrifying. rewarding.
“Candidly, there were moments where it was utterly horrifying. To be in that place for that long by yourself, it was crazy. But it was also so rewarding. I remember reading it and thinking it might be the hardest thing I’ll ever do. I was literally in every shot. And we were shooting long days and
short turnarounds and very heavy stu .”
Jessica Frances Dukes “ ”
It’s an epic journey of humanity, survival and fierce love. When all those things we think are important go away, what’s actually important?
Yet he was up for the challenge of making a show –produced by MGM+ Studios and Lighthouse Productions –that explores what might realistically happen if civilisation suddenly collapses and everything you take for granted every day disappears. “There are no zombies. It’s not that show. This is about people,” he says. “That was what was so interesting. God bless Michael Wright. He saw Vikings and felt like I was the guy to be able to bring this to life. I gave all of myself to this project.”
Featuring in almost every scene of episodes one and two, Ludwig admits he found the isolation the hardest. Yes, >
there was a crew to support him, “but when you’re the only actor on a set and you’re dealing with subject matter like you’re burying your parents and you’re finding out you’re the only person on the planet, I went to some places I didn’t think I’d ever go to in my acting career.
“I had some really hard moments,” he continues. “There were times when we were doing 16-hour days and I’d go to sleep for four or five hours and I’d have to be back at set in the morning and do it again and again for a month straight. It just never let up. But it served the story really well because that’s how he would have felt. So I used it where I could. But emotionally, this was the most taxing thing I’ve ever done.”
Then when other actors including Aaron Tvelt, Luisa D’Oliviera, Hilary McCormack and Howie Lai joined him on set – spoiler: there are other survivors besides Ish and Emma – “I could have cried,” Ludwig jokes. “I was so happy to just have other people.”
Taxing as it might have been for Ludwig, Ish, in the beginning at least, seems comfortable on his own. A gifted academic, he soon raids the local library and fills his San Francisco home with books. And he’s not entirely alone, after adopting a stray dog he finds on an empty highway. But after spotting chimney smoke in the distance, he races to find who else might be alive, and finds a gun-wielding Emma pointing both barrels at him from her rooftop. Though it might be an inauspicious start, they soon bond and their relationship goes from strength to strength.
“Ish’s weakness in the real world, or the world ‘before,’ was he is a recluse and a loner. That, in a weird way, then becomes his superpower at the beginning of the show,” Ludwig notes. “He can survive on his own, whereas most of us, including myself, would lose our minds. He finds purpose in it and talks himself through it and decides, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’
“As more people enter his life, he learns what love actually really means and he learns the importance of family and community, no matter what that looks like. You watch somebody literally try to rebuild civilisation, knowing that it will never be the same while doing everything they can not to replicate the mistakes we’ve made along the way. That’s what I love so much about it. It’s an introspective look at what it means to be human and what it means to be alive.”
Dukes first met Ludwig a couple of days before they began shooting, and found that all the preparation they had done individually meant she could immediately see them as Ish and Emma. “The beautiful thing about it was they are coming from two completely di erent worlds, and we got a chance to get to know each other as the characters got to know each other,” she says. “It was a really wonderful, almost parallel, thing happening.
That prep began with reading Stewart’s original novel and then going through the script to draw out what Komarnicki and the show’s other writers thought about her character. “I was having wonderful conversations with them as well, like, ‘She is Mother Earth,’ telling me all the things she was and all the things she’s done and their idea of what world she comes from.
“When I read the role, I knew there was a lot of me I had to bring to it, which is my earthiness, my groundedness and my experiences. Then I find images that could possibly be her world. I make a playlist of songs that embody what I feel she is, and then after that, I go through and I process the beginning. I do the backstory and just wrote in my journal everything she went through up until we meet her on that roof.”
Emma’s “sound world,” as Dukes describes her playlist, existed in meditation and chakra music, tapping into the “earthy, goddess vibe” of the character in Stewart’s writing. That also helped put her in the right emotional state to deliver whatever scene was scheduled next.
Like Ludwig, Dukes never had any doubts about taking on the role, particularly with a real pandemic still in the rear-view mirror. “I didn’t even get to my role before I said yes. I was within the first few pages of episode one and I was in love with the story,” she says. “I’m a post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world fanatic so I’ve seen every movie, every TV show that deals with that, so I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is it. This is what I wanted.’”
Why does she think Earth Abides stands out among its zombie-filled genre stablemates? “It’s scarier because it’s real. It’s about things that would actually happen,” she says. “When you talk about numbers on the call sheet, I always say Mother Earth is number one. That’s the di erence. It’s not about destruction or annihilation, it’s about rebirth. It’s about hope. It’s about love.”
individually meant she could immediately see them as Ish and took, it was the hardest order to come into that second episode and
“But the amount of work it took, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, TV- and film-wise. I studied for about a month before, just getting ready for what has happened to her in order to come into that second episode and be in the moment, in the world and experience what I was experiencing.”
Dukes’ preparation for the role also included considering Emma’s race and the time period in which the original novel is set. “It’s not quite said [in the novel] she’s a black woman, but it is hinting that she might be a woman of colour,” she notes. “I had to be like, ‘OK, if she was a black woman in 1949, who is she now in 2024?’ That was really important to me and I think to the writers as well. Both characters in the book were very much of the time, but now the world is di erent.”
On set in and around Vancouver, Dukes says she and Ludwig connected “immediately.” They partnered with Komarnicki and directors Bronwen Hughes, Rachel Leiterman and Stephen Campanelli to create a collaborative atmosphere, with the actors encouraged to bring their own ideas to the production. Viewers will get to see Earth Abides when it launches in the US on December 1, with Amazon MGM Studios distributing it internationally.
“I wouldn’t change the experience for the world,” Ludwig says. “It’s a really important show and it’s a very hopeful show.”
“It’s an epic journey of humanity, survival and fierce love,” Dukes adds. “When all those things we think are important go away, what’s actually important? I just hope people grow from this. Heal from this. Have hope from this. Call their family. Emma wants everybody to be loved and held. She has hope for the world.”
Ludwig and Dukes play Ish and Emma, survivors of a global pandemic who end up finding love
Preparing for battle
Making television isn’t easy. But when it came to historical epic Rise of the Raven, thankfully costume designer Bea Merkovits and production designer Márton Vörös were ready for a challenge.
In fact, both Merkovits and Vörös took on their respective head of department roles for the first time as they oversaw the creation of this 15th century drama, which charts one warrior’s journey to face down the imperious Ottoman Army.
Based on the novels by Bán Mór, the 10-part series traverses Europe – from the Alps to the Bosphorus – to tell the story of János Hunyadi, whose life is plagued by scandal, political power plays and conspiracies between noble families from Warsaw, Rome, Belgrade and Vienna. His strongest allies are the
women in his life: Erzsbét Szilagyi, his wife, and Mara Brankovic, his first love, who breaks his heart by becoming the lead concubine in Sultan Murad’s court.
When the Ottoman Empire mobilises an army of unprecedented size that marches west with ambitions to conquer the Vatican and overrun Europe, Hunyadi (Gellert L Kádár) scores a victory against all odds at the Battle of Belgrade, which ends the invasion and reshapes the history of Europe.
Austria’s ORF and TV2 in Hungary and Slovenia are attached to the series, which is produced by Serendipity Point Films, Twin Media, HG Media, MR Film and Beta Film. Beta is also handling international sales, and partnered with the National Film Institute Hungary to finance the drama.
Both Merkovits and Vörös were able to draw on some high-level experience as they began to work up their designs for the numerous sets that would populate Hunyadi’s world and the costumes dozens of central characters and hundreds more extras would wear on set.
Vörös’s work as an art director includes Moon Knight, The Alienist and Hanna, alongside feature films Robin Hood and Inferno. Merkovits, meanwhile, has worked in the costume department on productions such as Blade Runner 2049, The Martian, Marco Polo and The Borgias
“I did big shows before this as an art director or senior director, and then supervising director,” Vörös tells DQ, “but this was the first time [as production designer] and it was a great experience. I’m really >
Rise of the Raven recreates the 15th century Battle of Belgrade and one warrior’s determination to protect Europe from an Ottoman invasion. Costume designer Bea Merkovits and production designer Márton Vörös detail their work on this historical epic.
< pleased the production trusted me and gave me this status.”
“It was my first time in a big design role and I’m extremely happy for the opportunity from the producers,” adds Merkovits. “As a Hungarian, it’s a big thing to work on it because it’s an amazing part of the history [of Hungary] and it’s something we can be proud of. Also, my experience is more from bigger American shows, and here it was more a Hungarian crew so it was really familiar. And at the end [of each day], we went home.”
That this was a Hungarian production was also part of the appeal for Vörös, who actually began as the supervising art director but a change of roles led him to become the production designer. “The story is really cool. It’s maybe the best period of Hungarian history, and it was 95% Hungarian crew, which also was a good thing,” he says.
“The first script I read, it was really ambitious, with hundreds of locations and huge studio sets. During the whole process, we reduced this to make it achievable. That was the first issue, to figure out how many sets and how many locations we were going to manage and pay for. The breakdown changed 50 times. It was quite a long process to figure out which sets had to be done and which sets we could lose because of time or money issues.”
Merkovits similarly began her work by breaking down the extensive script to determine the number of characters and how many costumes they might need. Many years pass during the course of the story, which also meant fewer costumes could be reused than if the series had been set over a shorter period. “It was tough,” she admits.
The designer also needed to factor in a number of costume doubles, owing to the drama’s standout action sequences that could result in costumes being ruined or covered in blood, for example. “I ended up with 10 or 20 pages of breakdown, how many costumes we needed and how many changes,” she says. “It was frightening in the beginning. Then we had to work out how to reduce those numbers, because it was crazy.
“We had big scenes, fight scenes and rainy days, so it triples up the costumes because of the rain. There were constantly changing
numbers as the script changed. I’m sure Márton also had a hard time following up the script changes, and the changing sets.”
When it came to the creative side of their roles, they naturally started with the real history, where Hunyadi led a band of Hungarian defenders as the Ottoman force led by Sultan Mehmed II attempted to capture Nándorfehérvár castle, in what is now Serbian capital Belgrade, in 1456. They drew ideas from books or paintings that would inspire their costume or set designs, and then infused those ideas with their own tastes and that of showrunner Balázs Lengyel, producer Robert Lantos and directors Robert Dornhelm,
Merkovits designing a costume (inset) and the finished product on screen
300
Extras, stunt performers and doubles for battle scenes
50
1,000
Costumes made by hand
1,200
Weapons and pieces of armour
5
Attila Szász and Orsi Nagypál.
Merkovits’s decisions would often also depend on what kind of movements or actions the cast would be doing in their costumes, whether wielding a sword or riding a horse.
“It’s a big combination. There’s the historical part but then you need your imagination,” she says. “The colours are always a little bit made up. They did not have those colours in that time, but to make it more interesting, we played with colours a lot. Sometimes we used a few different fabrics that didn’t exist [at the time] to make it more interesting. But the important thing is to make it in a way that you still believe you are in that period.”
“In Hungary, everyone knows this story of Hunyadi who beat the Ottoman Army,” notes Vörös. “We learn about it in school and we know the story, but there’s not too much architecture remaining from this period. So the castle where the famous battle happened, there’s only one tower and a piece of wall. No one knows exactly how it looked 500 years ago, so we needed our imagination to figure it out. There are several architectural elements from this period, but not too many. That was nice issue for the art department.”
They both had about a month of prep before filming was due to begin, with Merkovits taking some of her cues from Vörös, who had already started work by the time she joined the production. “So I was trying to match costumes to the set,” she says. “Somehow it just worked out. I wish we could say we had hours of talking and comparing colours and paintings, but not on this one. I wish for that on the next one.”
Astonishingly, there were very few items of costume that weren’t made from scratch by Merkovits and her team. “Everything was handmade, from the shoes to everything. It
“
No one knows exactly how it looked 500 years ago, so we needed our imagination to figure it out. There are several architectural elements from this period, but not too many. That was a nice issue for the art department.
Márton Vörös Production designer
Stunt horses
was amazing,” she says. “I had a huge workroom with several cutters and several seamstresses. I had a separate workroom for leather workers, a separate room for costume breakdown.
“Because we ended up making the costumes for the extras, I had several outdoor workrooms as well, because it was thousands of pieces. In the end, we decided not to rent our costumes because of the show length – it became super expensive –so we decided to make the soldiers’ uniforms, the Turkish uniforms, almost everything.
“Mara was especially interesting because she starts in Serbia and she’s taken to the harem, so she had a big journey costume-wise – and ended up as a nun,” Merkovits says. “We were very lucky that we had the Turkish side, which is very colourful and exotic, and the European, medieval side. As a designer, there was a lot of freedom.”
Around half the series was shot on location in and around Budapest, Hungary, with the remainder filmed on huge studio sets for the Ottoman harem, the Ottoman castle, the Turkish castle, knights’ rooms and rooms belonging to the Vatican –one of which was described as being built from marble.
about how we could build the sets to control the amount of CG, because it’s very costly,” he adds.
Naturally, costs and time-keeping were huge factors while making Rise of the Raven. Script changes also meant Vörös and Merkovits had to remain flexible and agile to best respond to last-minute updates.
“I’ve worked on big shows before, but I don’t think I had that much making, including The Borgias and Hercules. These big shows rented [most of the costumes]. Here, everything was made.”
“That was an issue,” says Vörös. “‘How are we going to produce a full marble wall, a marble floor and stuff like this?’ We decided we would print it on a special paper, and when we put it on the wall like wallpaper, we would coat it with a special layer so it looked like marble. It was exciting.
“When the crew came in, everyone was checking, ‘Is this real or not?’ When you stand a metre away, you see it’s a print, but it looks amazing with the colourful marble patterns.”
When it came to making the armour for Murad, Merkovits even tried something she had never done before – making the whole suit from printed leather leaves. “They’re all laser printed, so every single leaf was made one by one and hand-painted,” she says. “The same was done for his son as well. That [technique] was something I learnt on the show.”
Designing costumes for the female characters proved to be equally challenging, not least because they often have “big journeys” that mean regular clothing changes. Mara (Franciska Töröcsik) is sold to Sultan Murad as a pawn in the nobleman’s schemes and is determined to win her life back, but her growing love for the sultan causes her allegiances to waver.
The Turkish harem set was another major task for the designer, who at times oversaw 150 people working on the biggest sets, from members of the art department and carpenters to painters and other construction workers. “It was a big set and we built a pool in the middle of the set, so that was a tricky one. We had to raise up the whole set and sink the pool in the middle. That was a really colourful set with a lot of fabric delivered by the set decoration department.
“To learn the right information from the right person, that’s the key to succeed,” Vörös says. “If you know the right information and talk with the right person and they’re sharing good information with you, your life is much easier.”
“Of course, the big set at the end, the castle, was built nearly from scratch. It was a huge set with big walls, towers, catwalks, stairs and stuff like that. It was a big challenge, maybe the biggest, because we had a very short amount of time. Sometimes we had to design in parallel with construction to finish in time.”
Merkovits is now already putting into practice the lessons she has learned from working on Rise of the Raven, which will have its world premiere during Mipcom in Cannes. “When you’re talking about period shows, in the end, what you see is never the exact period,” she says. “We always have to talk in the beginning about the period of the show, because you have to shape the characters and sometimes step out from the exact year [in which the story is set].
The daughter of a king, Elizabeth of Luxembourg (Mariann Hermányi) is described as a spoiled beauty who is impetuous, passionate and easily manipulated; while Erzsbét Szilagyi (Vivien Rujder) fights for her family and country on the home front while Hunyadi is away, and even breaks convention by joining him on the battlefield.
Vörös and his team also had to work hand in hand with the VFX designers when set extensions and other effects were needed. “We had a lot of conversations and discussions
“That’s what I’m trying in my next jobs, to really talk before we start filming about what the producers’ aim is with the show and what theme they want to see. Do we want to see it super sexy? Do we want to it to be more quiet? You always learn.”
of spoiled the away, and even breaks convention by joining him on the battlefield.
Building the castle set was one of the biggest challenges of the project for Vörös
An enormous number of costumes had to be made from scratch
Video Nasty Irish Production Company Deadpan Pictures
The Hardacres Irish Production Company Red Berry Productions
Mix Tape Irish Production Company Subotica
Dead and Buried Irish Production Company Vico Films
Stealing the show
Swedish drama The Pirate Bay explores the true story behind the titular file-sharing website, its role in activist culture in the early 2000s and Hollywood’s effort to sink it. Director Jens Sjögren joins stars Helena Bergström and Simon Gregor Carlsson to tell DQ how they have dramatised this global story born in Stockholm.
A
s the global entertainment industry continues to battle online piracy in a bid to ensure movies, series, music and more cannot be illegally downloaded and shared, a new TV drama explores the history of one of the world’s most notorious file-sharing sites and the efforts to bring it down.
The Pirate Bay introduces the eponymous website’s founders, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij, as they lead the battle for a free internet in the early 2000s. Their creation would go on to change the World Wide Web, influence politics around the globe and shake up one of the world’s most powerful industries: Hollywood.
Blending political drama and thriller elements with character studies of the figures behind The Pirate Bay, the story follows the trio as they face the full force of an entertainment industry that claimed it was losing revenue comparable to an entire country’s GDP, while their native Sweden gained a reputation as a file-sharing paradise.
But at home, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau, headed by Henrik Pontén, did everything to stop the site amid pressure from the White House, with star lawyer Monique Wadsted hired to help the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) pursue legal action in what would become the biggest trial in Sweden since the murder of prime minister Olof Palme.
“For me, it’s been a journey,” director Jens Sjögren tells DQ about making the six-part series, which is due to launch on Sweden’s SVT this autumn. “It started as a reaction to the adult entertainment system, and then as I started digging, it really struck me that these were characters and an environment that were really political.
“It wasn’t at all about downloading movies, porn, free music, stuff like that. It was mostly about making their voices heard, their belief that the internet was created to be free and their fear that five or six big companies could own the whole internet for their own interests.”
In fact, Sjögren likens The Pirate Bay to a Greek tragedy, where a character fights for something and dies in the end anyway, after the three founders were found guilty of
assisting the distribution of illegal content online in their 2009 trial.
“So it turned out to be much more of a character drama than just a cool, witty, fast drama about kids on the internet,” the director continues. “It was also really engaging to have a story that doesn’t take sides in a conflict. It’s totally up to you to decide what you think.”
Produced by B-Reel Films ( Thunder in my Heart ) and distributed by Dynamic Television, the series is based on an idea by Piotr Marciniak, who wrote the scripts with Sjögren, Jakob Beckman and Patrik Gyllström. Gyllström also directs two episodes.
Part of the show’s development involved separating fact from fiction, as Warg, Sunde and Neij wanted little or no contact with the production team. But during his research, Sjögren was drawn to the founders’ motivations he previously knew little about and wanted to focus on their attempt to use The Pirate Bay as a political statement.
“This is the first project I have worked on that has the same energy and ADHD personality that I have. They were all over the place and I thought that was so interesting,” he says. “They were so driven and they talked really fast. People outside this community didn’t know shit about what they did, but they sat on so much knowledge that they could change the whole world. That was so interesting, and that’s why we started working with the characters.
“Then we also noticed that these three characters were so different from each other and, as a director, I couldn’t ask for more to make a great drama. If three people should strive to create something that could change the environment for
“
entertainment, and they are left wing, right wing, neoliberals and anarchists, how should these three characters get along with each other?”
The other side of the story concerns “more traditional” characters such as Pontén and Wadsted. “They are just born in another time and they feel different about this whole thing,” Sjögren adds.
On screen, Arwid Swedrup, Wiljam Lempling and Simon Gregor Carlsson play The Pirate Bay founders Warg, Neij and Sunde, respectively. Antipiratbyrån’s Pontén is portrayed by Robin Stegmar (The Andersson Family) and Wadsted is played by Helena Bergström (Backstrom, Codename: Annika).
While Bergström has experience playing a real person, having starred as 1909 Nobel Prize-winning author Selma Lagerlöf in the 2008 TV movie Selma , she says it was still a “scary” prospect to play “an active lawyer still walking around the streets of Stockholm.”
“She’s very special and, of course, it’s an honour to be able to play her, but also kind of stressful,” the actor says. “Jens really helped me to let go of the real person but keep her energy. I don’t look like her, but I studied her and saw her on YouTube to see how she speaks. But then, of course, you need to tell the story. That was the most important thing.
“Jens said I should not meet her before [filming], for her and my sake, but now I’ve met her and I can say it’s been really fun. One thing I can say to Jens is we nailed the energy. I feel like you are really pulled into this story.”
Sjögren also spoke at length with Carlsson about how he might play Sunde as someone who is extremely passionate about their cause, despite his seemingly nonchalant exterior. Similarly to Bergström, he watched videos of Sunde on YouTube to capture his physical mannerisms.
“But the most important thing was the cause and the fight, that was the thing that drove my character,” he says. “Then it became not so much about playing a person that’s existed or is alive. It was just like portraying a character that is really striving for something. That was the most important thing.”
Jens Sjögren Director
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In the series, Sunde and Wadsted don’t meet until the court case puts them in the same room for the first time – and Sjögren believes that had the real figures met sooner, a lot of the problems thrown up by The Pirate Bay could have been avoided.
“They have some mail correspondence that is documented, real emails and stu like that, in which they get really angry. But they never really met,” he says. “It was like an introverts’ love story in one way, and then in the end, they sit down really close to each other in a courtroom. That’s also why we talked about it a
It turned out to be much more of a character drama than just a cool, witty, fast drama about kids on the internet. It was also really engaging to have a story that doesn’t take sides in a conflict. >
Simon G Carlsson, Arvid Swedrup and Wiljam Lempling (L-R) play The Pirate Bay’s founders, while Helena Bergström (inset) is the lawyer trying to take them down
< little bit like a Greek tragedy, because they never met. They just talked about each other in di erent rooms.”
“You really felt in the courtroom that we were two sides. You actually got personally engaged in it in a way that was very interesting,” remembers Bergström. “We were all burning so much for what [our characters] wanted in the series, and I’m so impressed by Jens’ work and the whole crew. You can think, ‘How can you make that [story] exciting?’ But they really succeeded because of the energy.”
Unlike Pontén (Robin Stegmar), who has been following the emergence of The Pirate Bay, Monique is thrown into the story when she is asked to represent Hollywood in the ensuing legal battle. But along the way, it becomes clear she has chosen a fight she believes the police do not adequately understand, leading her to demand they do a better job.
“As a female character, it was really fun to play Monique because she’s not trying at all to please anyone. She doesn’t give a shit how she looks. But she has so much energy,” Bergström says. “She knows what she wants and she goes to the government and police and says, ‘We’ve got to be able to take these guys down, because as an artist you need to be able to live on your work.’”
That idea particularly resonated with the actor, who was making films through the company she ran with her husband during the period explored in The Pirate Bay . “We were petrified they would steal our films before we went into the cinema, so I’ve been personally quite involved with this feeling,” she says. “You see the effect it has on the film companies. They are so scared of the net, and that is still the same now. So I’ve been through this as well, and I totally understand Monique’s energy.”
The Pirate Bay is more than just a Swedish story, however, and its global reach is reflected in the decision to shoot parts of the series in Thailand and Chile. “This is something that’s not just interesting or happening in Sweden. It was created in Sweden, and it was the start of something that would turn out pretty ugly,” Sjögren notes.
The relatability of the story is not lost on Carlsson either. When he joined the project, he “got the feeling that people were very excited because everybody had a connection to it somehow, depending on their age or how they used it,” he says. “Either they were like, ‘Oh, this was problematic as hell,’ or, ‘I loved this site when I was a kid.’”
Don’t I know you from somewhere?
Helena Bergström is one of Sweden’s most admired actors, with an award-winning film and television career spanning six decades. Here are three of Bergström’s more recent roles from which viewers might recognise her.
Rather than concerning himself with recreating every specific detail of the period in which the show is set, Sjögren was more interested in replicating the spirit of The Pirate Bay founders’ ambitions as they set out to change the world and right some perceived wrongs. “When I see it now, before we do the final picture lock and the grade, it’s emotional,” he says. “People are going to say a lot of shit about it. ‘It was not exactly like this, blah, blah, blah.’ No, but we really broke our fucking backs to try to just embrace the feeling of really struggling with something you believe in so hard – so much so you would almost be ready to go to prison for it.
“It’s so much just about characters striving, and it gets emotional. People get scared, angry, happy. In one way it’s a series about everyday life. But it’s packaged almost like an action thriller, and sometimes like a really scary thriller as well. It was a part of history that really engaged people, and that’s what we really try to put into the series, rightly or wrongly.”
roles
Codename: Annika
This 2023 SkyShowtime neo-noir crime thriller follows a Finnish art fraud investigator who goes undercover to uncover money laundering in Stockholm, assuming the identity of socialite Annika Stormare (Sannah Nedergård).
Bergström plays Agatha Torstensson in the series, which was created by Mia Ylönen and Aleksi Bardy and takes viewers behind the hidden world of high-class fraud and the reality of navigating a double identity.
Ture Sventon
Bergström has starred in two TV4 family series based on Åke Holmberg’s books about the titular fictional detective: Ture Sventon & Bermudatriangelns hemlighet (Secret of the Bermuda Triangle, 2019) and Ture Sventon & jakten på Ungdomens källa (The Hunt for the Fountain of Youth, 2023). She plays Matilda Jansson, Ture’s former secretary who, unlike Ture, is well versed in new technologies and is now a detective herself.
Bergström wrote this 2019 TV4 and CMore drama with director Colin Nutley, and it became TV4’s biggest launch in seven years. She also stars in the show, which tells the story of two quite different families brought together by an impending wedding. A second season and a film sequel have followed.
Bergström as star lawyer Monique Wadsted in The Pirate Bay
100
In the third part of the DQ100 2024/25, DQ picks out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.
as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.
A LIFE’S , a six-part series inspired by real events within the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s. In autumn 1993, amid the devastating turmoil unfurling in Bosnia, Swedish UN soldiers embarked on a perilous mission to bring peace to a fractured land. The series follows the journey of a group of young soldiers and their commander as they struggle with show is produced by Sweden’s
the complexities of war. The Jarowskij/Yellow Bird for Arte France and Viaplay Content Distribution.
SARAH SNOOK
THE SUCCESSION STAR IS FOLLOWING UP THE HIT HBO SERIES WITH THE LEAD ROLE IN ALL HER FAULT. Produced by Carnival Films (Downton Abbey) and directed by Minkie Spiro, the suburban thriller is based on Andrea Mara’s book of the same name, which opens with a plausibly terrifying situation that eventually unearths the deep secrets of a community. Marissa Irvine (Snook) arrives at 14 Arthur Avenue expecting to pick up her young son Milo from his first playdate with a boy at his new school. But the woman who answers the door isn’t a mother she recognises. She isn’t the nanny. She doesn’t have Milo. And so begins every parent’s worst nightmare. Megan Gallagher (Wolf) is the creator and writer.
AHMED ABDULLAHI
CHARLES
YU
THE AWARD-WINNING NOVELIST LEADS THE ADAPTATION OF HIS OWN NOVEL, INTERIOR CHINATOWN, for Hulu and Disney+. The 10part series of the same name follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural called Black & White. When he inadvertently witnesses a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web in Chinatown, uncovering his family’s buried history and discovering what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Jimmy O Yang, Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet and Lisa Gilroy lead the cast of the series, which is produced by 20th Television, Rideback, Participant and Dive. Taika Waititi directs the pilot. Yu’s other TV work includes American Born Chinese, Legion and Westworld
HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY
BELLA MACKIE’S NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME GETS THE NETFLIX TREATMENT IN AN ADAPTATION STARRING ANYA TAYLORJOY (pictured). She plays Grace Bernard, who has a complicated family. The product of an affair that her father Simon claims not to remember, Grace and her mother were left to fend for themselves. When her mother dies and she is rejected by the people who should love her, Grace transforms her anger into something useful: killing off this estranged extended family via morbidly creative means. Grace is clawing her way towards revenge and a hefty inheritance, but her mission only pulls her further away from what it is she really needs. Sid Gentle Films (Killing Eve) produces, with Extraordinary creator Emma Moran as the lead writer.
ACTORS
BACK ON THE CASE
A COUPLE OF FAMOUS INVESTIGATORS HAVE BEEN REVIVED AS CLASSIC CRIME PROCEDURALS CONTINUE TO FIND NEW FAVOUR AFTER A PERIOD OUT OF FASHION Bergerac (pictured) stars Damien Molony as the Jersey-based detective made famous by John Nettles, in a contemporary new series coming to UKTV’s U&Drama from BlackLight TV in 2025. Meanwhile, 1980s legal drama Matlock has been given a fresh take with Kathy Bates playing a new version of the witty, strongwilled lawyer who just happens to share her surname with the famous TV detective – a joke that puts some distance between the two series. The updated version is made by CBS Studios for the CBS network and Paramount+.
HEAD TO DRAMAQUARTERLY.COM FOR THE REST OF PART THREE OF THE DQ100 2024/25, FEATURING...
Benjamin Wainwright, Tessa, Sharon D Clarke and Shaun Evans
DIRECTORS
Javier Fesser, Julia Ford, Peter Grönlund and Sydney Sibilia
WRITERS
Lucy Coleman, Claire Oakley, Janice Okoh and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
SERIES
The Agency, Ponies, Make That Movie and Uzal
TRENDS & TRAILBLAZERS
Supacell, Julie Fernandez, Split personalities and Pobol y Cwm (People of the Valley)
SIX OF THE BEST
Elin Kvist
The CEO of Swedish scripted producer Jarowskij/ Yellow Bird compiles a list that includes a “gripping” police thriller, a legal drama about a family of divorce lawyers and one US series described as her “forever favourite.”
Friday Night Lights
Set in a fictional Texan town, Friday Night Lights is my forever favourite. The series beautifully balances its ensemble storytelling and tells storylines full of big themes and strong feelings. It reflects on deeply emotional family dynamics and isn’t just a sports drama; it’s an exploration of small-town life, ambition and the weight of expectation. I love the authentic style and tone, and how it isn’t afraid to lean into the big feelings. Although many in Europe may have missed its 2006 launch, it remains a must-watch character-driven drama with so many heartfelt moments.
After Life
Ricky Gervais’s dark comedy follows his character Tony as he struggles to cope with his wife’s death while navigating a bleak outlook on life. The structure of each episode is remarkable in how it takes viewers on an emotional journey from tears to laughter in just 30 minutes, while also maintaining its long story arcs. Gervais’s poignant portrayal of grief, along with the ensemble cast’s
delves into the institutional world of police corruption, with writer Jed Mercurio proving himself a master of his craft. The show features sharp writing with intense interrogation scenes and complex, shocking plot twists that keep viewers on the edge of their seats. I love the quote from Scottish critic and playwright William Archer, who said: “Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty,” which rings true with Mercurio’s constant ability to maintain tension throughout the
loveable quirks, gives the series a perfect balance between light and dark. It’s a deeply human exploration of loss and finding hope and humour in the absolute absurdity of life, even in the darkest of times.
way. It’s so well paced and the character arcs are so thought through – brilliantly performed by the exceptional cast. The four seasons will leave a lasting impression on everyone in the industry and beyond.
The Split
Abi Morgan’s legal drama centres on a family of divorce lawyers and is one of the strongest and most emotional relationship dramas in recent years. The storylines intertwine the professional and personal dilemmas wonderfully, showcasing Morgan’s expert writing. Nicola Walker’s standout performance captures vulnerability and strength in equal measure, navigating the complexities of marriage, infidelity and family loyalty. It is a rich and relatable exploration of love and loss, illustrating the bonds that hold families together.
22 Juli (22 July)
seasons. As a viewer, you are just waiting for the next big revelation to come, which makes this series incredibly engaging.
This Norwegian drama is possibly one of the most authentic series of recent years. Based on the 2011 terror attacks in Utøya, Norway, it tells the story from the perspective of journalists, police, medical professionals and civilians, and handles the trauma and resilience of those affected with care. The series explores deeply human themes and is an emotionally charged examination of how to grapple with the unthinkable. Gripping and penned with absolute care for the subject, it is an inspiration for everyone making drama based on true stories.
Succession
Line of Duty
This gripping British series is probably one of my favourites of the crime and detective
No list would be complete without Succession, a constant source of screenwriting inspiration. I’ve even bought the scripts to grasp how it all came together, and of course it’s masterfully written. The razor-sharp writing is so nuanced and features so many layers of dysfunctional family dynamics while exploring the complexities of wealth and power in such a smart and entertaining
22 July is an inspiration for everyone making drama based on true stories.
Nicola Walker stars in The Split
Netflix’s After Life Norwegian drama 22 July
FACT FILE
Borderline
Coproduced by Shinawil and Further South for Germany’s ZDF in association with Lionsgate, Borderline is an investigative drama where character and story take precedence over procedure. Two detectives, Aoife Regan (Amy De Bhrún) and Philip Boyd (Eoin Macken), work in a community populated by idiosyncratic people typical of the Irish borderlands – an area steeped in history, tradition and long memories.
Here, Shinawil executive producer Larry Bass and series producer Mary Callery join Further South EP Steve November to reveal more about this series, which comprises three featurelength episodes with stories all impacted by the border and its history, present instability and uncertain future.
Borderline executive producers Larry Bass and Steve November join series producer Mary Callery to tell DQ about this character drama about two mismatched detectives, set on the Irish border.
trope – the mismatched cops – but in Borderline we have two very different police officers from two separate jurisdictions separated by a long-standing history of animosity and mistrust. Boyd and Regan are each a civilian in the other’s jurisdiction, so while criminals and crimes cross the border with relative impunity, it is much harder for our detectives.
Topical crimes addressing current social issues and cultural specificity
The characters and culture are very specific to Ireland and the border, and so are the crimes. The series aims to tells stories that could only happen in this setting. The third story, for example, takes us into the highly competitive and partisan world of Gaelic sports, and specifically hurling – which is little known outside Ireland and is the fastest field sport in the world.
The Irish border is the United Kingdom’s only land border with the EU For years, geographical borders have fascinated viewers. They beg so many questions: how does a border define its community in terms of family, friends, cultures and economies? What do people living on either side of a border have (or not have) in common? How do attitudes towards a border shift over years with differing political and judicial administrations?
The Irish border has always been a neglected ‘backwater,’ not least when it comes to TV drama. Many people outside of Ireland are unaware a border even exists. But creator and writer John Forte grew up with the border and travelled across it many times. He knows the area is a beautiful, idiosyncratic place with its rural landscape and chequered history of smuggling and violence, and he wanted to explore it more deeply and make it a character in a drama.
Each detective is a civilian in the other’s jurisdiction Boyd, from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and Regan, from the Republic’s An Garda Síochàna, are forced by their superiors to work together on serious crimes. It's a familiar
Brexit
The history of the two countries is also frequently alluded to and informs our characters. For example, DCI Boyd always checks for bombs underneath his car – a hangover from the Troubles, when police officers were often targets of dissident groups. The world inhabited by our characters is the real world of contemporary Ireland.
The show is shot where it is set
The production was based in Louth, a few miles south of the border, so the whole show is shot where the drama is supposed to take place, taking advantage of little-used and lesser-known landscapes.
As the Troubles receded, so did the status of the border; it became a reminder of the past with little or no contemporary importance. But Brexit changed all that. Suddenly, the Irish border was back in the news, both nationally and internationally. This presented John Forte with the perfect opportunity to explore his long-held fascination with the border, its issues and stories and incorporate them into a contemporary, relevant drama.
Borderline is a UK-Irish coproduction in the English language for German and US financiers
The on-screen drama of international politics and cooperation is mirrored off-screen, as Borderline brings together a UK producer (Further South Productions) with an Irish producer (Shinawil) to make a drama in the English language for a German broadcaster (ZDF) and US distributor (Lionsgate). Thankfully, relations between production partners run more smoothly than the relations between Boyd and Regan.
Eoin Macken and Amy De Bhrún as detectives Philip Boyd and Aoife Regan
Defining the gold standard for excellence and achievement in International TV and Audio programme making.
The award ceremony will take place on Monday 2nd December at Kingʼs Place in London, hosted by award-winning comedy writer and performer, Sophie Duker. www.rosedor.com
SCENE STEALERS
Red Rocks
Director and producer David Stubbs transports DQ to the New Zealand set of this family adventure series to reveal how his “old school” approach to special effects helped him to achieve a climactic final sequence featuring an animatronic seal.
The shooting of Red Rocks , our eight-part family adventure series, involved many specific and unique challenges. We spent eight weeks filming on Wellington’s South Coast, with 70% of that time outdoors – in the middle of winter – on the rocks or in the water. Madness, really, as the next stop south was Antarctica. To top it off, in the spirit of keeping it real, we added animals, children and animatronic seals into the mix.
Workshop, Red Rocks takes the Celtic myth of the Selkies – or seal people – and transplants it into the landscape of Wellington’s wild south coast, throwing an ordinary boy into a lifechanging adventure.
Produced by Libertine Pictures for BYUtv (US) and Sky (NZ) with investment from NZ On Air, the series is adapted from New Zealand author Rachael King’s award-winning novel of the same name and distributed by WildBrain, with the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate cash-flowed by Hinterland.
the rocky shores of his father’s pool
Red Rocks follows 12-year-old Jake as he is drawn into a world of mythical creatures and adventure when he finds a sealskin hidden on the rocky shores of his father’s seaside home. When unexpected dangers are unleashed, Jake is called upon to protect his family.
Featuring animatronics created by Oscar- and Bafta-winning visual effects and props company Wētā
Wellington is notorious for its roaring and bitter southerly winds, and we faced them daily. Calm seas just aren’t a thing here – except in the writer’s imagination. So when one of our climactic final scenes required fog as an obstacle to our heroes’ escape from an angry Selkie, we had no choice but to go indoors. We transformed a local primary school’s enclosed swimming pool into the cruel sea of Cook Strait. This required creating a whiteout fog, dealing with nervous child actors, a rickety, sinking dinghy, and a champion freediving puppeteer operating and submerging our one-ofa-kind, very expensive, and meticulously crafted Wētā Workshop animatronic seal. I wore my brown trousers that day.
a whiteout fog, dealing with one-ofWorkshop animatronic
The scene follows an exciting chase sequence where our young protagonist,
The family adventure centres on 12-year-old Jake (Korban Knock)
The Red Rocks cast on location in Wellington
Jake, is pursued across the seas of the south coast by Cara, a Selkie desperate to reclaim her skin and potentially punish Jake for taking it. We had already shot parts of this chase out on the water, where the seas had been choppy and freezing and the wind bitter and sharp. A combination of stunt performers and brave actors allowed us to piece together the first part of the chase, shooting boat-to-boat. But the next part involved Jake rowing his dinghy into a fog bank (as much a fantasy in these waters as Selkies themselves), so our challenge was to achieve this without resorting to CGI or VFX fog.
My philosophy is always to try to get things in-camera. I believe the audience can sense when something is CGI, and it can disrupt the emotional journey when those elements are presented as obstacles. That’s why, for Red Rocks , we embraced animatronics instead of 3D CGI seals, and used real fog effects instead of CGI fog. In a town famous for Oscar-winning visual effects ( The Lord of the Rings , King Kong , Avatar ), we proudly took an old-school approach.
To achieve our foggy ocean, we pumped copious amounts of atmosphere into Berhampore Primary School’s learner pool – a pool in which both of my children learned to swim, and one I was familiar with from several under-eight birthday parties. Its compact size made it easy to fog up, but also meant the sides of the pool were quickly revealed unless the fog was extremely thick. So we doubled down on the white stu and positioned fake rocks along one side to create jagged and dangerous obstacles.
We also covered the bottom and sides of the pool with black fabric to block out the blue tiles and match our realworld environment – standard procedure for a pool shoot, but remarkably effective.
“My
philosophy is always to try to get things in-camera. I believe the audience can sense when something is CGI, and it can disrupt the emotional journey when those elements are presented as obstacles.
David Stubbs
”Water-loving art department volunteers used barrels to pump the water and create waves, while we suspended our camera over the pool with a jib arm and gimbal rig. Luckily, the pool’s enclosure was semi-opaque, so daylight lit the environment for much of the day.
Next, we introduced our hero seal, Jessie, a Selkie – meaning she can shed her skin and turn into a human. In this case, she’s a seal pup who, in human form, is a curious and sprightly girl who befriends Jake. In this particular scene, she leads him through the fog to safety.
Wētā Workshop created two seals for us: a full-size adult and the smaller Jessie. The fullsize seal was designed to charge on land, built around a stunt performer/puppeteer inside, along with external cable animatronics. The
‘Jessie’ seal was effectively a hand puppet with cable-operated animatronics for the mouth and nose.
With a goal to achieve everything in-camera, we needed the primary puppeteer to operate below the surface, effectively holding their breath while performing for scenes where the seal was in the water (whether in the pool or the ocean). In this case, Jessie needed to pop out of the water in front of Jake, lead him to safety by swimming a few meters away, turn back to check if he was following, and then dive underwater.
Ideally, we’d get this in one shot without needing to paint out the puppeteer later. To this end, we were fortunate to have Kristine Zipfel, a real-life water wonder woman who could not only puppeteer Jessie into life but also hold her breath underwater for extended periods without scuba gear. A freediver of some renown, Kristine always resurfaced with a smile.
On the day, we got everything we were after and more – the footage looks fantastic. The seal survived its watery submersion and was ready to re-enter the real ocean a few days later. The only VFX will be some eye blinks and nose flaring for the Jessie seal to complete the transformation.
As I write this, I’m heading into editing to piece together this scene with the rest of episode eight’s climactic chase. Will the transition from the epic real-world setting to the swimming pool work? Will the audience prefer a super-realistic puppet seal over a CGI one? And, most importantly, will Jessie help Jake escape the clutches of Cara? I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
Stubbs is hopeful viewers will give the animatronic model the seal of approval
Who will lead television’s next revolution?
Is there another series out there that could possibly herald the next turning point in the business? Those of us returning to Mipcom this year will be hoping to find out.
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN NETFLIX STEPPED INTO ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING FOR THE FIRST TIME? OK, maybe it’s not the most monumental moment in history to which the ‘Where were you when…’ question can be applied. But it’s certainly one that sent shockwaves through the international television business.
In case you were still wondering, it was in October 2011 that Netflix boss Ted Sarandos confirmed the then-fledgling streamer, still a mail-order DVD rental service, had acquired Norwegian dramedy Lilyhammer as its first ‘original’ series. Produced by Rubicon for Norwegian pubcaster NRK, it starred Steven Van Zandt – best known as Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist or Silvio from The Sopranos – as Frank Tagliano, an American mobster who joins the witness protection programme when he gives evidence against his former boss.
And like the great and good of the international content business, I was in Cannes for Mipcom on that date when news broke of Netflix’s entry into the original programming game.
The rest, as they say, is history. House of Cards and Orange is the New Black followed Lilyhammer to Netflix as quickly as other streaming platforms entered the market for themselves, creating the Great Content Boom as production struggled to keep up with demand and consumers were spoiled for choice, whatever service they opted to sign up for.
Since then, as we know all too painfully, the shift in focus from subscriber numbers to the streamers’ bottom lines, compounded by a declining ad market, inflation rates and a commissioning slowdown among traditional broadcasters, has seen the global industry struggle over the past two years. Numerous production companies have closed down or consolidated, and thousands of people in the sector have lost their jobs or found new work hard to come by if they’re members of the freelance community.
Answers to many questions may still be elusive as the industry returns to Cannes for Mipcom 2024, with the New Content Economy continuing to take shape and producers and distributors alike seeking common ground in the new normal. Licensing has certainly become fashionable again – just ask the BBC, which has been picking up US and Australian series in particular to populate iPlayer and some of its late-night slots.
After being so protective of their own production pipelines, US studio-led streamers are also freeing up some of that content to be sold off-platform. Then there’s the buoyant coproduction market, where prospective partners are looking to club their stretched finances together to continue to make the high-end, cinematic content viewers have come to expect from every broadcaster, no matter how or when their shows are watched.
I was reminded of how Netflix triggered the streaming boom recently when I interviewed Lilyhammer creators Eilif Skodvin and Anne Bjørnstad about their latest series, Billionaire Island A comedy-drama some have described as the Norwegian Succession, it is set against the backdrop of the country’s profitable salmon farming industry, focusing on two families – one more traditionally Norwegian, the other not afraid to demonstrate the benefits of their vast wealth – that come to blows over a prospective hostile takeover.
Twelve years after Lilyhammer debuted on Netflix in 2012, Skodvin and Bjørnstad are still amazed that their show was picked up (initially) for US audiences, at a time when nonEnglish-language series still struggled to find much of an audience outside their own country.
Another Netflix series, Squid Game, might have turned the page forever on that idea. But the international television business was forever changed by the arrival of an American mobster hiding in a small Norwegian town.
Is there another series out there that could possibly herald the next turning point in the business? Cineflix Rights will be shopping dystopian drama Heart Attack, which is described as a live-action anime. BBC Studios has a fresh take on a TV detective in Death Valley, a crime comedy-drama that sees a retired actor best known for his screen cop alter-ego play at crime-solving for real. Or could it be GoQuest Media’s Absolute 100, about a female markswoman protecting her family, that fires the starting pistol on a new era for the industry?
Those of us returning to Mipcom this year will be hoping to find out.
Michael Pickard Editor, Drama Quarterly
WHO’S WHO
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Editor-in-chief & managing director David Jenkinson
